Queer Arts Festival opens Portals for emerging artists and contrasting journeys
With its complex searches for identity, the celebratory exhibition at Centre A reflects the unifying theme of QAF’s latest edition
Evan Matchett-Wong’s “Pyramid Mountain Series” (left); still from Christian Yves Jones’s Where Are You From?
The Queer Arts Festival presents Portals at Centre A from June 21 to August 23
AS THE RISE OF anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric impacts 2SLGBTQIA+ lives, the annual Queer Arts Festival offers not only programming, but a sanctuary for queer, marginalized, and diasporic communities.
From June 6 to 28, the Queer Arts Festival offers a variety of community engagements and events, including visual art exhibitions, concerts, media screenings, and community-driven social events.
According to Mark Takeshi McGregor and Diane Hau Yu Wong, the curators of QAF’s signature visual exhibition, the inspiration for this year’s theme emerged, fittingly enough, inside an art gallery.
“We were gallery-hopping one afternoon and going to an artist talk given by Arkah at Artspeak Gallery,” McGregor recalls during a Zoom call. “I was saying to Diane how much I was struggling with the theme for Queer Arts Festival this year, and at one point she says, ‘Check out these tattoos I got. They’re like portals.’ I leaned in and said, ‘That’s the festival.’ I think people are attracted to this theme of portals, of searching for identity, whether it’s a geographical search or a personal search. It was a way of tackling serious issues with a bit of whimsy.”
The curated exhibition is set to be presented at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art from June 21 to August 23, and its lineup of artists includes Arkah, Evan Matchett-Wong, Sena Cleave, Miles Saraswat, Christian Yves Jones, and Naomi Maya Leung (梁珮恩). Each artist brings a distinct perspective shaped by their diasporic experiences, and draws on practices such as photography, sculptural art, embroidery, film and video, and mixed media. Through an organic collaborative process between McGregor, Wong, and the artists, Portals weaves together contrasting journeys to show the complex intersections of queerness, migration, and belonging.
“For me, my job as an artistic director and as a curator is to uplift these voices that would normally be put on the side,” Wong says. “Decolonization is very much about uplifting these voices, creating opportunities for emerging and younger artists to tell their stories, and building a community that cares for one another. Art can be used to imagine how different communities can come together and interact with one another.”
For McGregor and Wong, engaging with this year’s group of artists, many of whom are emerging and based locally, has been a revitalizing experience. “Sometimes you get into a rut, and it’s nice to be around people who are excited,” McGregor says. Similarly, Wong describes the artists’ passion and excitement as “infectious,” and their collaborative exchange as her favourite part of the process.
Now in its 16th year, QAF has grown into one of Vancouver’s most vital platforms for 2SLGBTQIA+ artists and audiences. In 2021, McGregor was officially named the artistic director of the Pride in Art Society, the non-profit organization that produces QAF, bringing his multidisciplinary experience as a classical musician and visual artist to the role. Alongside Portals, he has curated exhibitions featuring S.D. Holman, Rojina Farrokhnejad, and Preston Buffalo.
“My background is classical music, which is extremely hierarchical,” says McGregor. “Programming visual art has been a real process, and working with Diane has been great, because she dispenses with any sort of hierarchy with us as curators. It’s just engaging in conversation to figure out how we can best serve the artists we are working with. I love the dialogue.”
Wong, who serves as the artistic director at Centre A, brings her own expertise and experiences to Portals, including her passion for community-building, contemporary Asian art, and diasporic narratives. Just as her work bridges speculative futurism with current issues, Wong hopes the exhibition honours the queer community’s vision of a better collective future.
“I love working with emerging artists,” Wong says. “Mentorship is a big part of what I do in my job, and working with this group of artists has been a great experience. It’s quite rare to have a group show with all local artists. What I would like to see the most is a better understanding of how rich the queer experience can be, especially when viewing it through different lenses like heritage and culture and language and geography. I would like to see more spaces for opportunity to explore intersecting diasporic identities that are not monolithic.”
True to their mission, Portals is an opportunity to hold such a space for festival attendees and art lovers alike. The ArtParty! opening reception at Centre A on June 21 will provide a chance to connect and celebrate with the artists in person. Attendees can also check out the QAF Community Art Show at SUM gallery, and the return of the queer printmakers’ exhibition at On Main Gallery, to continue the celebration of queer lives.
“One thing that I find really interesting is how our understanding of queerness has really changed and expanded over the last 20 years, since the festival started,” McGregor says. “If you look at mainstream media, it tends to be very homonormative and dictated by white western stereotypes. There are certain stereotypes that queer Asian people constantly challenge. If I’m looking at a future, it’s one where people understand on a broader level what being queer and Asian means, and that it is different from one person to another.” 
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